Anderson .Paak's New Album Has Dr. Dre & Madlib On The Same Track

Anderson .Paak has come a long way. As he tells Rolling Stone in their detailed feature, it’s occasionally difficult to maintain a similar mindset as the come-up. “Now, it’s trying to keep that same mentality, but when you have everything,” explains .Paak. “When you’ve been eating calamari and lobster, when you’ve been going to festivals and playing for 40,000 people.” Now, it’s all come full circle for the talented artist, who has decided to evoke the past for his upcoming Oxnard project. The feature cites the classic era where A-list producers would provide beats on a relentless, back-to-back basis, citing Jay-Z’s Blueprint and The Game‘s The Documentary as primary influences.

“I feel like ambition is missing from today’s music,” he explains. “This is the album I dreamed of making in high school, when I was listening to [Jay-Z]’s The Blueprint, The Game’s The Documentary, and [Kanye West’s] The College Dropout.” To make matters even more exciting, .Paak details some of Dre’s involvement, eternally grateful for the good Doctor’s contributions. “He’s not gonna just be up there with an MPC making it from scratch. He’s gonna get this person in the room, he’s gonna get that person in the room, and he’s gonna guide the whole session. And then once it leaves his hands, when he puts his name on it, it’s not gonna be like anything else. Every little thing is gonna be perfect.”

If that wasn’t enough, .Paak also has Madlib on deck, on a track mixed by Dr. Dre no less. He proceeds to explain that Madlib sent a finished beat, only for Dre to request the stem tracks for mixing purposes. “Usually, if you get the beat, that’s it. You’re not gonna get the different stems, so you don’t have the opportunity to switch around their sound or whatever. So, that was one of the instances where we just had the beat, and then when it came time to mix, Dre was like, “Yo we need the stems.” Cause Dre’s mixing the whole album. And I was like, “Fuck, man, we couldn’t get the stems from Madlib.” We told him we would have to re-do the whole track. The next day, we got the stems.”